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The initial problem was performance of access to files over an SSLVPN connection was too slow to be acceptable. Even relatively small PDFs and Excel spreadsheets were taking minutes to open. After some brief consulting with a sys admin buddy, he suggested looking into a DFS setup. We repurposed an old CAD/Modeling workstation as a server with an evaluation version of Windows and setup an old router we weren't using as a site-to-site VPN connection.

Night and day difference according to the Project Manager we tested this with. So we pulled the trigger and purchased 4 Dell Servers and 4 SonicWalls to replicate project data to our remote users (3 project managers and one drafter/designer) all in different areas of the country.

With the DFS setup, we can throttle replication speeds during business hours so it doesn't kill our internet connection then open it up after hours to let the files replicate as they need to.

The one and only hiccup with the setup came from a small oversight in planning. The network shares are pointed to the namespace path so when I added the servers as members of the namespace and added to the replication group, people were getting their network shares mapped to DFS servers that hadn't finished replicating so files and folders were disappearing. A quick change to the GPO for drive maps fixed that, but a word of advice to anyone looking to add DFS servers to an existing namespace: Copy files BEFORE adding the servers to the namespace even if you have to robocopy. It will eliminate panic when an entire share turns up with empty folders and it will help alleviate the pressure of the initial replication quota.